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Team USA skier Mikaela Shiffrin grew emotional in post-race interviews Wednesday when she tried to explain what happened to make her go off-course about five seconds into the slalom, her specialty event, just days after a previous bad run at the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
“I think I just slipped,” Shiffrin told NBC. “I mean I had every intention to go full gas and there wasn’t really space in the course to, I don’t know, to slip, not even a little bit. I didn’t give myself space for that.”
She said in the past, that mentality has led to her best skiing, “but today I went out on the fifth gate.”
The American’s disappointment was compounded because on Monday she crashed just 11 seconds into the giant slalom race.
Holding back tears, she said her second “did not finish” result this week “makes me second-guess the last 15 years, everything I thought I knew about my own skiing and slalom and racing mentality.”
Mikaela Shiffrin of Team USA sits on the side of the course after skiing out in the first run of the women’s slalom at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022, in the Yanqing district of Beijing. (Associated Press)
The 26-year-old Coloradan is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, having won the slalom at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, and the giant slalom at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
She also has a record 47 career World Cup wins in the slalom.
Out of control
In Wednesday’s event, Shiffrin began losing her balance and teetering out of control just four seconds and four gates in, swerving too far as she veered to her right. The neon yellow handle of her right ski pole scraped along the snow as she ended up way wide of the fifth gate.
Afterward, she clipped out of her skis and sat on the side of the course, resting her head on her knees for about 20 minutes as other racers skied by, an indelible image of her disappointment.
Mikaela Shiffrin of Team USA skis out in the first run of the…
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Source : foxnews
